The Story of Critical Force: Over ten Years of joy & Pain - Veli-Pekka Piirainen, Critical Force.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] from a story building one Studio up in the north of Finley we go to another one which is critical force from kyani I've got honors VP to the stage how you doing it's been a while yep good good you've got you got your clicker you're going to tell us all about critical force and how you've uh story 10 years my God yeah so this is story about critical Force 10 years and more joy and pain so this is my personal story about my personal journey journey and the reflections

of roller coaster of different kind of emotions Ryan and founder and chairman of the board at critical Force before starting my own company I was working at supercell as a studio manager at supercell North around 11 months based in kayani and I also founded game development curriculum in Italian University 2005. and I have been several entrepreneurs since 1994 mainly in I.T and building business at the moment critical forces about 70 employees and we have been developing multiplayer shooter games from the start and our main offices in kalyani and then we have Studio here in Helsinki and we have developers around the world working

remotely so our main title critical Ops it has already 130 million downloads and it has gained 40 million dollars Revenue so far so how did we get there so I started the company 2012. I hired a talented programmer who has been who has started developing web version of Counter-Strike and and from there we got the idea so I gave him Android device and hey let's bought the game on mobile and it run smoothly so we knew that here's something so I have more people to develop the game and then we launched the very version very first version of the game in July 2012.

it got uh around 100 000 downloads the very first day and and it felt already quite a big success because we didn't have any user acquisition only marketing is just in the chat different kind of channels and and and then people found the game and we were happy but we didn't have any monetization in the game so we didn't earn any money so the master plan was because that time premium games there's still a thing but free to play we're coming we didn't have any free-to-play experience so the master plan was that we make iOS version as a premium price tag 299 we get 100 000 downloads and all good we also changed the name of the game so we have a little bit cautious Critical Strike it's almost like Counter-Strike the game is like Counter-Strike so we

were a little bit afraid so we changed the name critical Mission SWAT it was a stupid thing but anyways we lost the game and here's disappointment so the market shifted so heavily to play the plane nobody bought anymore premium games so we have a thing a big hundred thousand downloads during the first week now we got five thousand ah so I had already invested hundred thousand in the company by myself and I was thinking that oh this was so so big disappointed that I want to quit I'm not that good entrepreneur in the game but after the Christmas holidays I just don't say I don't give up I will put some more money I put 40 000 and let's try something so we put ads on the game and they started to bring revenues

little by little and and uh that we could survive okay then I made a second mistake let's make a really skinned version of the game so we're in the space shooter which was practically even worse we got about 30 000 Euros with that game but uh spending those resources for new game unless the better choice would have been that improve the current game and make it better yeah but we got also State money so we got electron some early Center so that helped us survive and and we started to develop the fourth game so the Critical Strike slash critical missions that

got players that was a huge win so we had uh over 300 000 daily active users in in February 2013. this was very useful for the future games so I started the bootstrapping period so we released the fourth game it was a multiplayer tank pedal game on Google Play and later also on Windows though because Windows mobile was a thing and we got up campus grant for making the Windows mobile version of the game it was not a big success but we learned how to make free to play games so first steps in that but in between 2013 2014 I started to feel very overworked uh overburden because I was working also at the University full time and then

full-time also at the company so 16 hours per day was too much so I hired a studio manager to help help me out and then he was a great guy he started to sort things out and and really for my working workload so we started to think what next so Critical Strike was a success when we think about the amount of players but monetization didn't work the bug software architecture was bad Graphics were bad so let's make new version of the game with better software architecture and better graphics and so on and luckily because of our studio manager we got original Counter Strike Creator and developer mean layer for one month from Canada and with his help we started to develop the new game and he also gave us uh

game character assets and gun assets with animations for our use so we get going really fast and could test the game and meanwhile we get some eloquence again and then there again some kind of problems with the studio manager I had to fire him it was very fire him which was very painful for me very very depressive time for me and and but we kept going and we launched open Alpha version of the critical Ops game it was the new game name on Google Play and we started to get players we started to get money and revenues and and yeah

some pictures of the early days there's a mean lay with me so time of scaling up the game gets traction uh we started Esports activities so we won casual open startup competition we were chosen as a fitness game Studio of the year then we launched the game globally on Android and also on iOS and then we got the first investment 4.5 million US dollars from South Korea so then we could start to scale up so we started to hire more and more people we make made a new game or founded a new game development team make a new game multiplayer showed up inspired by OverWatch then

we also set up a studio in South Korea which was the mistake and the reason for that was that our investor wanted published Asia version of the critical Ops game in Asia but they said that we need Asia version of the game which would be different than the Western version so we set up a team in Korea making the Asia version of the game but things look good so our monthly revenues Rose so picked 1 million US dollars per month Dau rose up to 900 000 monthly actives over 7 million and installs over 33 million downloads so everything looks good

so amount of employees quadrupled so in two years we had a June 2016-18 employees and June 2018 78 employees which was a huge mistake problems started to appear there were miscommunication things cultural differences uncertainty space problems daily work was extinguishing the five years of the time and this was because the operational capability of the organization was much lower than what this kind of complexity of processes and operations were needed for that that size of a company and you have almost 80 people so we didn't have things in place for that so that caused quite a lot of pain so we started to struggle so in April 2018 Fortnight mobile and pubg

mobile came out we got some technical issues with our game you got hackers in the game our player base halved in few months also our revenues halved in few months our cash cash position started to melt down pretty quickly and we were already thinking oh we ran out of money there's bankrupt coming but we will do and and so on business Finland loan 1 million euros saved our asses so we had some Runway to improve things so we killed the sixth game we've put all the energy improving critical up so we merge the teams and and we get things running again better so we get more of the players more revenues but that was not enough so in the in the end of 2018 we have to make some layoffs in the company and and try to get

things going with less people and that was quite stressful time for me and I always got a burnout because making layoffs is very very difficult so uh I will see if all CFO started as CEO I started in the position of chairman of the board and I took a Payless leave and things didn't went so well so of course he made good things so he closed the critical Force Korea office but the game started to decline again then Call of Duty mobile came out we lost lots of competitive players lots of influences to Call of Duty mobile and finally I had to fire our CEO and I

became as a CEO again and what went wrong with the CEO was that it just didn't fit in our company culture 2020 I will pack I nominated a new management team we started together create new vision new strategies for the game new company structure and organization also improve our company culture and things started to get better there was slight decline in the game but meanwhile we could improve the monetization of the game so our revenues didn't drop practically at all and then we got an investment 2021 again 10 million dollars from Asia again

and uh we set up a prototyping team and started to make again new games then more in Ukraine so over Revenue decline again because we lost the Russian Market also the inflation Rising interest Rising living costs and so on and that was also oh going down then we could stop stabilize our situation and new game went in pre-production last October in production this February and again I'll try to downshift and we have a new CEO since the picking of this year who has been working at critical Force

since 2014 he knows the company and the products like his own Pockets so very good fit and very happy having him as a CEO so now I'm making four days per week and some some extra things with game City kalyani things we also have a two very promising prototypes coming with unity this year also I got awarded our flavor of the year at The Finnish game awards so I was very happy about that and Lessons Learned invest in your company called invest in your people don't hire too quickly and only hire when you really need someone and be very careful when hiring because that's one of the biggest mistakes I made

hiring wrong people so be sure about the culture of it be transparent with your employees and involve employees as much as possible in the daily work and have a clear everything clear strategy in the company and never lose your focus because losing focus is distraction and it's dividing your resources raise money when you can because when hits the fan you start to lose money pretty quickly you need the worstest that you can get over the bad times and spend your money wisely because it's very easy to spend money but it's very hard to earn it so keep I on your expenses your cash situation and Runway that's the most important for the entrepreneur thank you almost in time

well I think that's probably the most honest presentation I've ever seen I was very kind of what's in all um ups and downs then you have a question for VP about that everyone's kind of still slightly shocked and there's a question over there I think or you're standing up can we get a microcross there we go come over that's no it's impressive while we're waiting for that can I ask you one question yes I actually I wanted to tell the story just because there's money and many entrepreneurs here were starting business so I wanted to tell the story and also uh because I personally love presentation where I also told the bad things happening and how you got over and uh yeah so not not just that everything is fine we are doing well but also but yeah we just turned up we did Clash of Clans now with supercell it's not yeah it's not very useful that's much more interesting how you overcame all that would you do it all again have you started now okay there's a question there sorry go

for it so I noticed that you had a lot of trainees at the start and you kept using trainees to to a lesser degree as time goes by would you have any words to encourage Studios these days be they smaller or bigger too so um keep training up new Talent definitely so uh train is a very good source of talents so they are still let's say Raw but when they get some working experience they can be super talented so we have been very luck with our interns so we could hire very good trainees into company and hire them and that's practically how we grew up mostly of course we got also senior people but uh Source mainly from Canada university has been the big plus for the company

awesome thank you very much well thank you VP I'll just catch you later hopefully it's all upwards from here it's all up here [Music]